Painting turtles: an introduction to species distribution modeling in R

Cooperative learning: Students can work through the exercises in groups, using either the painted turtle data or group-specific taxa (i.e., each group selects a taxon to model). This module addresses multiple, complex concepts – online data availability & access, spatial query & analysis, global climate models, theoretical concepts of SDMs, model fitting – any of which can be expanded depending on the instructor’s preference, group work can be especially beneficial for facilitating comprehension and may be more efficient.

Jigsaw: The module can be easily extended to allow each student/group to examine the distribution of a different species and explore data availability among taxa as well as different aspects of model fitting.

Students use R to search, download, and plot the
distribution of painted turtles from the Global
Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), then implement the BioClim modeling algorithm to build an
occurrence-based species distribution model for painted turtles using the BioClim variables.